After you read a book, do you leave a review in at least one place: Amazon, Goodreads, Kobo, B&N, Net Gallery, skywriting, etc? You can usually leave a review anywhere books are sold online, regardless of whether you bought it there. In 2015, I decided to leave at least one review for every book I read. Why? Mostly because I had to honestly ask how I could expect readers to review my books if I wasn’t willing to do the same. I keep track of the books in a simple spreadsheet—title, author, genre, date read, quick thoughts, where reviewed, and how I know the author (in real life (IRL), Facebook, signing, etc.)

Why is it important to write reviews?

Bottom line—reviews help readers decide which books to spend their money and time reading. I always read reviews prior to purchasing, especially if it’s by an author I’ve never read. Reviews provide genuine feedback that helps me allocate limited resources. By reviewing books you’ve read, you can have a direct impact on convincing others to also read it (or not). Word-of-mouth plays a tremendous role in determining whether a new book “makes” it. Reviews aren’t just an ego boost for the author—reviews actually play a part in how often a book shows up in searches, Amazon exposure, and ad opportunities.

Another reason to write reviews is that it provides you an opportunity to improve your copywriting skills. Copywriting skills you might ask? Yes! Regardless of how they are published, authors are responsible for a huge portion of their own promotion. Practicing writing snappy, concise reviews will help you write your own back cover copy, promotional ads, and snippets in various online forums, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

How do you write a review?

I’m sure we’ve all seen reviews that read like short stories—they take up multiple pages, and often include spoilers. I rarely read those. Instead, I look for short reviews I can consume in a bite. A few sentences is plenty. Include what you liked and didn’t like (and why), but NO spoilers.

What if, for whatever reason, you don’t feel you can leave a positive review? Who said a review must be positive—it’s more important to leave an honest review, even if it means leaving a lower star rating. When I check reviews, I first look at a few 1-stars—I want to know quickly what readers hated—some reveal things I might not want to read that aren’t obvious in the book’s description. Next, I look at some 5-stars—I want to know what readers loved. Lastly, I look at a few 3-stars—these are generally the most honest and relevant because they are likely from readers with no connection to the author.

What do you do if you might have liked the story, but the mechanics left something to be desired—editing, formatting, etc. If the book is self-published, consider contacting the author directly and let them know your thoughts. Some authors (the smart ones) will welcome your input as long as you’re truly trying to be helpful. You could save them a huge amount of wasted time and money on promotion by letting them know their book isn’t quite ready for prime time. Can this approach backfire and result in an offended author? Of course. But personally, I would rather a reader come directly to me so I have an opportunity to improve. If the book is traditionally published, you can still contact the author with what you’ve found wrong. You can also contact the publisher. Does all of that sound like work? It doesn’t have to be anything more than a simple email or Facebook private message (do not do this in a public forum).

As an author, you should be reading deeply and widely. While doing so, consider taking a few minutes after you turn that last page to leave a review. Someone might just do the same for you one day.

About Jeanne Felfe

Jeanne Felfe is a multi-published author writing in the mid-western part of the United States. Her debut novel, The Art of Healing, was a Quarterfinalist in The Booklife Prize 2017 competition. Since 2014, she’s had more than twenty short stories and essays published in a variety of anthologies. In 2017, her personal essay, Amidst The Weeds, won first place in the inaugural contest for the online magazine, Fiftiness.com.

Jeanne serves on the boards of both The Missouri Writers’ Guild, and its chapter, Saturday Writers.

]]>http://authorityauthors.com.au/the-importance-of-book-reviews-why-and-how/feed0Write Your Book in 90 Days – Online Program Launchhttp://authorityauthors.com.au/write-your-book-in-90-days-online-program-launch
Tue, 13 Mar 2018 05:41:36 +0000http://authorityauthors.com.au/?p=433Finally, we’re about ready to launch the new How to Plan and Write your book in 90 days, using Dixie’s proven formula for authors of Non-Fiction. This is the program where authors can work through the process I use for one-on-one planning, then writing and developing a manuscript. Due to demand for my personal time, I just simply can’t clone myself to accommodate the demand for my time do set about last year developing this special program.

Please take a look at this landing page – where you’ll find information about the contents of this program.

Retailing for $247.00 or three monthly payments of $97.50, it includes a special one-on-one coaching session with Dixie personally, to keep author’s on track. A one-on-one coaching session is usually $250.00 – that’s a HUGE saving!

We’ve been testing this program for several weeks now and continually fine tuning the contents and delivery and we’re very confident that the program as a guided DIY option works really well for a fraction of what you’d pay for Dixie to personally work with you on planning, writing, and developing your Non-Fiction book. There’s also two additional courses in development that will walk participants through the produciton and publishing phases and then the marketing, distribution and promotion phases of becoming an Author-ity Author.

]]>How Authors Can Support Each Other Betterhttp://authorityauthors.com.au/how-authors-can-support-each-other-better
Tue, 13 Mar 2018 01:17:38 +0000http://authorityauthors.com.au/?p=425Authors I work with are Non-Fiction specialists, and most of them speak professionaly or do training as part of their regular work. For them, books are part of their marketing collateral, and in some cases act as an extended business card, and in others, a giveaway or product to sell. What ever reason anyone has for writing a book, it’s important to know that we as authors can support each other better, and really we must to this. Because it’s easy for us to help ourselves by helping each other to greater levels of success as authors.

Here’s how we can do this:

If you are part of a mastermind group, or belong to a support group or association, ask the other members to Forward Tweets, FB, and Instagram posts about your book – not just once, but two or three times.

Ask them to be part of your reviewers group.

ASK THEM to share your news about new book releases with their contacts – get the momentum building up.

ASK THEM to please go into your Amazon listings and buy/review/post ratings on your books.

You may have to ask several times, but if we all got into the habit of doing this for each other, we can achieve a lot together.

Those are the basic things we can do for each other, but there’s more.

If you are a professional speaker:

Last week I was sitting in the audience supporting one of my authors. I knew a few people in the room who also knew I might be there for that reason, so I was not the ideal person to throw questions from the floor, but I turned to the person next to me and asked him to ask the presenter/author ‘How can I get a copy of your book again?’ This gave that presenter/author a perfect opening at the end of his presentation to remind authors of the link for the Amazon listing – of course this was written out as an easy to remember URL using TinyURLs. Without that easy intro to remind the audience to get the book while it was FREE for a 24 hour period, the chance may have slipped by. As it turned out, the extra prompting and being ready with an easy to remember URL helped that book to climb to number one on Amazon overnight.

We can also do things like, have someone in the audience mention the book in a question – for example:

Prime someone to ask something like: “I read in your book that you advocate for ‘daily blogging’/’hugging trees’ (or what ever your subject is-but make it something intriguing) and I wonder if you can expand on that in relation to ‘popularity on social media/mental health” (or whatever…).

Get a good piece of something that you know will interest the audience about your book, to create a dialogue about something in your book, and have this raised in your presentation as a question. This might sound contrived, and yes, it is, but if you can have people help create interest in your books while you are presenting, it will help to generate sales or downloads.

Have two or three people in the convention walk about with copies of your book under their arms. Encourage them to talk about you and your book. Creating a two or three day free download opportunity for your kindle version is also ideal in supporting this strategy. Arm your advocates with what they need to support you. Educate them about your needs ahead of time.

This is about helping yourself to use your resources, including other people, to assist in the popularity of your books. Go out there and identify some good advocates, reviewers, and encourage them to help you. And do the same for all the other authors you know. Let’s all rise up as a result of supporting each other as authors.

]]>Six Easy Steps for Promoting Your Book From the Stagehttp://authorityauthors.com.au/six-easy-steps-for-promoting-your-book-from-the-stage
Tue, 27 Feb 2018 00:40:34 +0000http://authorityauthors.com.au/?p=394I’ve just returned from Auckland, New Zealand, where I attended the extraordinary Global Speakers Summit of 2018. While there, I connected of course with a number of high profile speakers, authors, and several extremely talented Game Changers working in their particular areas of expertise, determinedly changing the world one speech, connection, or radical idea at a time. It was heady stuff being in surrounded by so many extra-ordinary people, and I learned so much in a short few days.

I have attended the GSS before, and also several of the GSS member country events since 2002. What I find most fascinating about these events, is the fact that we all have quite varied expertise, and while many authors were there, just as many of them were in the dark about how to really make their books ‘pop’ from the platform. So I’m going to share a handful of tips I was discussing with people this past weekend and hope you find it helpful next time you’re on stage and have the chance to promote your book(s) or products from the stage – even if you are not supposed to be doing that as part of the speaker deal you agreed to.

Promoting Your Book From the Stage

Get your book on Amazon – ASAP – and do it well. Ensure you also have an author page, linked to your book, and tell people to follow you there – as well as having a link to that page from your website so anyone visitng your page can immediately see ALL your Amazon featured products.

Get the book you most want to promote for the event you are at, into a top 10 position for the event, so that if anyone seeks it, they will be able to see immediately that you are ranking well for your book- this adds to your credibility.

Create a TINY URL (using Bitly or Tiny URL) so that the very long Amazon link looks less like THIS: https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Author-ity-Publish-Non-Fiction-Business-ebook/dp/B00MVUP53Y/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1519689463&sr=8-1, and more like THIS: https://tinyurl.com/FI2ABook

Use this URL in your PowerPoint slides and handouts, and tell people you have many notes and resources, available FREE in your book ( the one that is most relevant by topic to the audience/speech du jour) and direct them to that link, for a limited time – ie 24 or 48 hours only.

Tell your audience that if they would like to grab a copy of your book – free – that you’d also appreciate them taking a few minutes ‘next week’ to review your book on Amazon – because reviews are highly valuable for you as an author, (it’s called Social Proof) and perhaps even offer to run a webinar the following week FREE for those who do post a star rating and reveiw comment… even IF they rate your book poorly for any reason. Why? Because this helps them to get busy, take action, and gives them a chance to give you honest feedback – which you can then address and take action on if necessary.

Ensure they know the importance of dropping you a note after posting their review for getting the free webinar details. This helps to ensure you also get their email addresses for remarketing. You may also like to offer a link to sign up for a special website page where all this is confirmed and clarified in case of any confusion.

Target your promotional links to your book on which ever Amazon country you most wish to have increased rankings in. There are 12 countries you can do this with. So example if you are speaking in Australia, link from the Australian Amazon.com.au if you are speakng in the UK, link from the Amazon.co.uk site.

If you do all of these things well, over that 24-48 hour, or specified date – if your book is set to launch on a specific date – your Amazon rankings and sales will increase for a few days – which is an ideal situation for you in terms of ongoing marketing with Amazon books. But that’s a topic for another blog.

I know that’s seven steps, and not six easy steps for promoting your book from the stage, but here’s one more BONUS for you:

BONUS tip: Put the link to your book on the bottom of your emails and send it to everyone who gave you a business card at the event. And even repeat the FREE day for another 24 hours only a few days later – to help capture more people- and make that a shareable link for people to share if they are talking about you and your presentation to their friends or colleagues after the conference.

This extra surge should offset the spike in sales or downloads giving you a slightly better edge with Amazon’s algorithms, which are set to detect single spikes in activities.

If you need help with more on Amzon, or to get your book ranking better on Amazon – let me know.

]]>Why it’s not really just about ‘the book’http://authorityauthors.com.au/why-its-not-really-just-about-the-book
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 06:06:12 +0000http://authorityauthors.com.au/?p=359Before, During, and After your topic development – what you most need to think about:

I was talking with someone today about what comes first – the chicken or the egg… ok… the book or the speaking topic!

The issue is often a matter of priorities – and what you’re already doing. What have you already invested in, and how is that going for you? If you are already a speaker, getting paid to share your wisdom from the stage then start with that, and refine your topic, work out the main thing(s) you want to share, with the audience you most want to inspire with your own wisdom, experience or stories. And from there a book is an easy (and essential) addition to your marketing materials and back of the room merchandise.

If you are already writing non-fiction and want to become a great speaker, or just get more books selling then you need to be speaking to groups and larger audiences when possible to ensure your books are getting to the hands of those you want to inspire, beyond just seeing and hearing you speak.

Either way – they are interractive and essential parts of the whole. You can’t be a speaker who doesn’t write, any more than you can be a writer/author who does not speak. They just go together like, well… love and marriage… a horse and carriage – ok enough with the musical cliches, but you really need to put these things together firmly in your mind!

If You Have Already Started the Journey

“But what do I speak/write about?” I hear you say… or “what if my topic changes between one modality and the other?”

Why not start with evolving where you are currently and getting into some serious planning about your topic first… and then you’ll know exactly which Everest you wish to climb! For example, if you are already talking about leadership, or sales and marketing, how can you evolve your current topic into a strong niched version of this? Or work on a book topic that has the ability to focus more indepth in part of your book on an area that truly makes your heart sing when you share it. If you think you might want to develop into something that is a part of what you already cover – speaking or writing, then simply evolve it, narrow down your niche and develop a keynote speech or book section that hones in on that one thing. From there you can further explode it out into much more – on that one thing – but instead of thinking about reinventing your wheel, and throwing the baby out with the proverbial bath water, you can move along rather than just changing direction.

H0wever, if on the other hand you are starting out as either a speaker or writer, then you have to ask yourself some key questions to arrive at which Everest you wish to climb.

Key Questions To Consider in Topic Development:

If you only had ONE speech to give, ONE book to write, ONE person of importance to you to inspire… what would you say?

Why would what you want to say/write matter to that one person? That one group of people?

Called into an unexpected boardroom, event, stage opportunity, what do you MOST want to share if this it the life changing opportunity you have been seeking? Not your life, but THEIRS!

What do you want to have happen as a result of what you said/wrote/shared?

Will They:

start a revolution?

Join one?

Call you for a chance to further engage with you?

Something else?

You have to think this stuff through. Because if you don’t, you won’t be able to get consistent in your messages across all the platforms you want to be seen in/on. You also need to know who you are speaking/writing/talking for and why. Why should they care?

Then it becomes a matter of Before (you write or develop your speech), During the process of writing/speaking, what you want to have happen and where you wish to be seen/heard, and After you write/publish/speak… exactly what happens next, for you and for your audience/readers.

If you can get some real clarity around all this NOW. Before you go any further on taking action, then the action that you do take will yeild far greater rewards for you, and have significantly more meaning for your intended tribe.

If you need help with your Author-ity Topic Developepment, then please let us know – we’ve got some great resources you can access for this.

]]>Book Stores and Online Stores – The Difference Down Underhttp://authorityauthors.com.au/book-stores-and-online-stores-the-difference-down-under
Fri, 12 Jan 2018 01:17:54 +0000http://authorityauthors.com.au/?p=322If I had a dollar for every time I was asked one question back in 2010, I’d have retired already. That question was, ‘how do I get my books on Amazon?’

Back then I’d usually answer with, ‘Why Bother?’

The bricks and mortar stores in Australasia were still selling books, albeit, not terribly well. However, many were closing, and most had diversified beyond selling books, and had ‘warehouse sales people’ behind their counters, many of whom were far from passionate about books, and were unable to be of much help if the requested book by a customer ‘wasn’t in stock or on the computer yet’. Add to that, due to the sheer volume of books available, book store owners and managers were simply challenged beyond believe to know what might be worth stocking and what might gather dust and end up heavily discounted a few months later. It was hit and miss to stock shelves, and Indie Authors missed out most of the time, as much due to the quality of their books, but also due to the lack of sales channels that led them easily to get their books noticed by buyers.

Amazon was equally challenging back then, because due to their own internal rules about needing to have enough stock on hand to supply orders quickly, the warehousing of books and distribution channels meant that if you didn’t have some kind of managed warehousing of your books based in the northern hemisphere, you would likely be rejected by Amazon anyway.
Forward to 2017 and all the rules have changed. Now, it’s easier than ever to upload your books to Create Space, Ingram Sparks, Barnes and Noble, Nook, Kobo, Kindle. E-books can be sold via Kindle within minutes of being uploaded, and Create Space can fill orders within days of your setting up an account.

The quality of print on demand is outstanding, and the need for warehousing hundreds or thousands of copies of your books has gone. No more expensive outlays for authors to stock printed copies, fulfil their own orders by lining up at the post office. The royalties are paid when and as expected, with full reporting functions built into all of the platforms available to sell on.

So, what’s the problem with all that?

Ignorance mostly.

Authors are still struggling to know what to do, how to do it, and the learning curves around uploading can be fraught with deep time-wasting pits of despair. It takes time, and a lot of reading the fine print and understanding the process to do your first upload onto either Create Space or Kindle. Working out how to price your book, determine the best categories and why this is important, and even understanding the special ways that Keywords work for or against your book’s success takes time and knowledge.
Unfortunately, the average newbie author often does not see the value in paying for expert help, despite the fact that they are now saving significant amounts on the production and printing of books. And this is the one thing that needs to change for authors, especially in Non-Fiction genres. Getting armed with the knowledge needed to do this well, is as critical an investment in publishing a book as editing and cover design is.

Being an author is time consuming, often for low returns, and yet is one of the most creatively rewarding things a writer can do. Seeing others benefit from your shared stories, wisdom, experiences is priceless and getting those reviews that mean you know you’ve contributed valuable knowledge to someone anywhere in the world is heart-warming to say the least. Getting those checks from Amazon is also pretty exciting. But if we’re all going to do it well, and ‘ace it on Amazon’ we have to start approaching the technical ends of publishing. That means paying for expertise sometimes, just as you would for social media specialist work, and design skills.

In 2018, I challenge all authors to up-skill – not by diversifying their studies across too many publishing topics, but mastering one or two necessary areas, and sharing that knowledge with others. That will still keep the overall cost of successfully publishing down to an acceptable level for most indie authors – and make it even more viable to pay for the specialist areas you need to dive into occasionally.

]]>Creating Down-Time to Feed Your Creative Spirit Increases Your Creativity and Productivityhttp://authorityauthors.com.au/creating-down-time-to-feed-your-creative-spirit-increases-your-creativity-and-productivity
Tue, 19 Dec 2017 03:40:44 +0000http://authorityauthors.com.au/?p=313One of my favourite things to do over the holiday season is to turn everything off. No emails, phones, social media – nothing for a few days. It’s THE easiest time of the year to ‘detox’ from all work related things. And then… after a few days of lolling about in the sun (I live down under so Xmas in the summer) and I’m totally ready to plug into my creative brain. And then … the MAGIC happens.

I always remind my self of just how powerful down-time can be when my creative juices are seriously inspired by taking a break from everything. In fact, last week I ‘ran away’ for a few personal reasons, to the tranquility of the beaches in the extraordinary Cook Islands. For those of you not familiar with the place, it’s a little north of Fiji, and south of Hawaii… the middle of the South Pacific and OMG – so beautiful… anyway I digress. The point is, that the calm waters, absence of friends and distractions, not to mention the delicious sunsets I was able to meditate on every day for a week was enough that now I’m fully firing all of my creative sparks and ready to start my next novel.

The magic happens when we unplug for a while. Last week I also started reading Ariana Huffington’s book ‘Thrive’. An excellent reminder of just what happens when we do things like rest, pay attention to our sleep habits, take naps, meditate, and focus on nurturing our selves properly. My highest recommendation for something incredibly good to sink into over the New Year by the way…

While slowing down to speed up may seem counter-intuitive, it really does work. Magic really does happen for us creative types when we take our eye off the deadlines, necessary work commitments and turn our phones and computers off for a few days. Even a few hours is worth doing – and just sitting and focusing on … NOTHING!

Whether you meditate or not – and this is not a blog about doing that – finding thinking time clear from distractions is the single most important gift you can give to yourself. As a writer, I know that clearing the decks is the only way to ensure I get to tap into the best way to move forward on anything I’m writing. So I do usually try to do this, but making a regular habit of it, is never easy.

There are some important steps to take to do this:

Commit to a time or day and/or day per week when you just turn everything off and focus on … nothing.

Consider when you are at your best in terms of the time of day when you can write, create, do and honor those times. But just before then, try to get some thinking or meditation time happening. You will be more productive – I promise!

Schedule non-breakable ‘me’ time. Whether this is weekly, monthly, annually, daily – just create what works for you – the combination of options – and COMMIT to that.

Keep an ‘inspiration’ journal or folder, so that if you ever do get stuck on your ‘focus on nothing’ time, you can gather some extra inspiration from there. Fill it with ideas, dreams, quotes, ideas… don’t just stick it in your bottom drawer – refer to it often as needed.

Consider what rituals might support you in your quest for time out. Lighting a candle, taking a bath, mieditaing at sunset or sunrise, walking on a beach, spring cleaning… what ever it takes, work that out and work with that!

When you feed your creative spirit with stress free time, your creativity goes up, your productivity goes up, and your income and satisfaction, not to mention your happiness levels all go up too.

So – what do you have to lose?

Absolutely nothing!

]]>Cola or Champagne – service levels and what they meanhttp://authorityauthors.com.au/cola-or-champagne-service-levels-and-what-they-mean
Wed, 22 Nov 2017 02:06:48 +0000http://authorityauthors.com.au/?p=216I work in an industry where a lot of people put their hands up and say ‘Oh I can do that for you’, or ‘me too’. I’m talking about coaching – in any format, and regardless of speciality, there seems to always be someone waiting to offer their card, promote their services, and be ‘that guy/gal’ at the networking event.

For a long time Coaches have been compared with real estate agents and car sales people for their sheer enthusiasm when it comes to ‘I can do that for you’ style of pitching for business. I asked my own coaching tutor who was a master practitioner at the time back in 2003: ‘If everyone wants to call themselves a coach, and there’s no legal or educational requirement that they be properly trained, then why are we (on the 2 year program I was on) working so hard to want to ‘be coaches’. She responded with a well considered answer:

“What you will do is bring coaching skills to the table when you do what ever else you will do, and you will be significantly better at THAT because of it.”

My ‘that’ has turned into publishing, which for more than a dozen years now has meant that my business is all about helping others to write, produce, publish and market their non-fiction books – to a very high level of content and overall production quality. And for me, it does not end with the finished product arriving on my authors’ doorsteps; we keep working together to ensure the marketing and the fine tuning of the distribution and leverage opportunities is maximised for the long term.

I know that a lot of people are populating the publishing industry – expecially in terms of self publishing or Indie trade, with promises to help people write a book. Others are then saying they can help print, design, format, edit, produce, or even get the book onto Amazon.

Yay! And please excuse my cynicism – but there are a lot of these helpful people out there. Sigh! The terrible tragedy is, that as a result of many people doing a ‘good enough’ job, there is a glut of ‘barely average’ quality books all vying for attention in an overcrowed market. In non-fiction books alone, under the category of Leadership, there are 100s of thousands of titles. And it grows every year… as do all categories.

The Book Business is BOOMING!

While this seems to be the age of ‘fast and furious’ in many ways, from the demands for instant gratification for Gen-y’ers, faster internet speeds, faster travel, fast-track education options and even speedy restaurant services, when it comes to some things, you just can’t rush them. In order to do the whole job, well, and achieve outstanding outcomes so that you really are standing out from the crowd in any busy market place, you must slow down and Get.It.RIGHT!

With books, you have to expect it’s going to take time to do a great job of writing, then publishing your work. While I have also managed (once) to start and publish a book in under two months (with multiple authors contributing which in some ways helped and others hindered the progress) this is certainly not ideal, due to the increased chances of mistakes being made – errors than can ultimately damage the reputation of the writer(s).

There are a number of new companies out there all promoting what they can do for authors to fast trak their publishing journey – I think of them as the Cola beverage options; yes they’ll quench a good thirst, but ultimately put a lot of dirty sugars and chemicals into your system which can slow you down. By comparison, a glass of fine wine or Champagne is to be enjoyed, with others helping to drink it, and if it’s of excellent quality it won’t give you a headache the next day.

I don’t like being the cause of other people’s headaches. And while a quick ‘thirst quenching’ option might be a good one in some instances, a slow and steady team effort that is remarkable for outstanding results is surely a better option for professionals who are sincerely focused on having excellent books to support their marketing efforts.

If you are serious about writing, producing an excellent non-fiction book to position you as an authority in your field, and you really do know how to own that position, then please don’t undersell yourself by doing an average job of sharing your wisdom. Your book deserves better and so do you.

Invest a little more, extra time too, and enjoy a Champagne journey towards becoming an Author-ity.

]]>Key Words and Writing Descriptivelyhttp://authorityauthors.com.au/key-words-and-writing-descriptively
Tue, 07 Nov 2017 00:48:34 +0000http://authorityauthors.com.au/?p=168You wrote the book, and the back cover, and the marketing material, and even a great press release… and you’ve uploaded the book to Amazon, put some ads on AMS and Facebook, and then what happened… ?

Nothing. Nada. Zip!

So you sat down and cried – because all that hard work seems to have been for nothing. Right?

Wrong!

Maybe you just got the creative description wrong.

What might be missing is the description, being laden with great sharp-as-a-butcher’s-knifedecriptive writing with seo keywords. Maybe your heading is not done with an SEO Keyword Search Tool used to ensure it’s easily found by anyone doing a Keyword Search.

Do you see what I just did there?

I used a number of relevant, descriptive keywords for SEO searching in the paragraph I wrote. I also made the title of this blog post an SEO Keyword rich, descriptively written title. And just to really drive home the point, I’ve also boldened the particular keywords I’ve used.

Let’s take a paragraph with two versions of the same information from the back of a business book. One version is SEO Keyword rich, and the other just reads well.

If you’re seeking a new way to do business, and get more out of every penny you spend on marketing, you’ll find this book is a must read. It’s loaded with resources, ideas, and clever ways to maximise your marketing and advertising, so that your strategies are better employed for improved ROI.

Get more ouf of all your marketing investments, and discover a better business solution through smarter marketing and advertising strategies. You’ll find marketing tools and business resources and an abundance of Return on Investment ideas that really work, and more.

Now clearly you wont want to bold up each keyword, that’s not the point of using keywords in creative writing, but you will need to ensure that a few key points are highlighted so that even the scanning reader will pick up on them.

The point being that if you do a lot more about ensuring your descriptions are well crafted so that more people find what you want them to find, your traffic goes up.

And if you ensure that y our creatively written descriptions are filled with hooks and enough bait on them to ensure the readers are inspired to take action (ie click and buy) then you will sell more books.

Some copywriters assert that the first lines needs to be very short, sharp and powerful, to then inspire the reader to get to the next longer and more descriptive text in the next paragraph. The idea being that as the reach the end of the description they go BACK to the top or opening lines and that is what they have still jiggling their neuropathways as they then open the book to review the first few pages. I am inclined to agree with this and am adapting my own descriptive writing for back covers to accommodate this line of thought.

It’s the hooks that make someone want to pull up a chair, grab a cup of coffee and keep reading. It’s the seo keyword research that will help people find your book first.

I’ll write more about hooks next time…

For now – just as we all need to do, it’s time to refine some of my keywords in the descriptions of my copywriting a little more.

Happy writing everyone…

Dixie

]]>NaNoWriMo and a busy Novemberhttp://authorityauthors.com.au/nanowrimo-and-a-busy-november
Sat, 28 Oct 2017 07:19:48 +0000http://authorityauthors.com.au/?p=153If you’re into various author and writing forums you’ll be aware of this looming thing tht happens every year now called NaNoWriMo… which basically stands for National Novel Writing Month. Its a global call to action for writers to pen a novel of 50,000 words within the month of November.

It’s a great idea and particularly helpful for anyone in need of a jolt to their writing habits. I for one am very tempted as ameans of testing myself to see if I can do it – but then I am the competitive type. And I know my habits lately have fallen a little flat in terms of dedicated daily or even weekly work on manuscripts.

And – while this is a site for Non-Fiction authors, the real hook here is that the better we craft our abilities to write stories, the better our non-fiction writing becomes.

But – I’m very torn by the idea of focusing what amounts to mayby 50-80 hours within November – a busy time anyway for me – with a new project when I perhaps really should be focusing on projects I’m already committed to.

But what would I give up to do this? Facebook in the mornings? Watching the news at 6 for a month? How can I fit in an extra hour every day – maybe somedays two whole hours – to undertake drafting another novel. Maybe I can give up reading for a month?

On the persuasion side of this conundrum, I have two stories that I really do need to write a sequel to and I know if I got going, I could bang the first draft out quite quickly. I’m bothered mostly by the idea that if I really want to be a writer, I must write – and I know in my guts that I’m not doing enough of that.

If I joined one of the many groups who all focus on helping move the project forward and holding us all accountable I could get a lot out of that. the NaNoWriMo official site has a great process and members all over the world. Hundreds of thousands of authors all writing together does sound like a brilliant project to be part of…

So what’s a girl to do?

Stay tuned… I’m still deciding!

If anyone else is thinking about it and stillon the fence with the idea at this last end of October, maybe we should compare notes on what’s holding us back and what really is pushing us forward.